


My Father's Son

by hopeless_eccentric



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Blood, Character Study, Episode: s01e16-17 Peter Nureyev and the Angel of Brahma, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Internal Conflict, Introspection, fun fact i will kill and die for young peter nureyev, im so protective of this mf and i have feelings about it so enjoy this, the character death is mag dont worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:33:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27664766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeless_eccentric/pseuds/hopeless_eccentric
Summary: As much as he tried to corral his thoughts, he was tired and his patience with tactics that had been taught to him by someone he didn’t want to think about grew thin. He couldn’t quite keep his mind from wandering back towards the sticky red room and that sticky red light, in which he could hardly tell his own hand from the knife or Mag’s blood from the floor.Mag had taught him too well. He had spent the last several years trying to end the lives of thousands to save an uncountable amount as well as teaching his son to be just like him. Nureyev supposed the life he traded for millions had merely been an extension of that lesson. Mag just hadn’t expected to become collateral in himself.
Relationships: Mag & Peter Nureyev
Comments: 12
Kudos: 27





	My Father's Son

**Author's Note:**

> hoo boy. i have thoughts and feelings
> 
> Content warnings for blood, murder, chloroform mention, grief, implied shitty parenting, past violence, alcohol mention

Peter Nureyev didn’t know where he was or how much time was left to tick away before someone found him. He was in somebody else’s stolen clothes that were too tight and too loose in all the wrong places and he bore somebody else’s ID in a wallet he had never truly needed. All he knew was that the four cinder block walls on every side of him seemed to be creeping ever closer and he couldn’t get the blood off his hands. 

He tried a deep breath and failed. He tried a grounding swallow and failed. He tried to look the murderer on the other side of the mirror in the eye and couldn’t hold the gaze for more than a second for fear the glass might crack. 

When nothing worked, he closed his white-knuckled, red-streaked hands around the edge of the porcelain sink in some public bathroom or another and gripped as hard as he could. He faintly wished he still had those nails he had done away with for the sake of ease in sleight of hand, but he knew their tapping on the sink of cold, corpse-wax white would only worsen the jumping of that foreign organ within his chest.

Even if his head and chest pounded with the heat of adrenaline and buzzed with the cold of numbness is equal measure, he could distinctly tell that the feeling of the porcelain under the pads of his bloodied fingers was cool. If he couldn’t ground his quaking legs to the floor or his spinning head to his neck, he could at least ground his hands to the sink. 

Peter’s breathing began to even the longer he made a purposeful note of the curve of the basin around his hands and where his fingers couldn’t quite grip because of the angle of the sides. His head started to end its swimming by the time the chill of the sink began to warm under his touch, electing to drown, rather than to put up such a frantic attempt to think of every rule of thieving he was breaking just by standing there. 

If Mag could only see him, he would have berated him on at least five or six counts. Nureyev’s getaway had been clean, but he couldn’t be certain if someone saw him tearing through the public park in search of a bathroom with a door that locked. He knew he had not worn gloves when opening the door, and he had also wasted far too much time standing and trembling over a sink that would do nothing to keep handcuffs from around his wrists. Mag would certainly have a comment or two for all the time he wasted with his throat burning and his vision swimming as he stared down at the unyielding streaks of red beginning to dry on the sink.

The thought of that tiny pile of failures was not what had seized its cruel hand around his windpipe and squeezed, however. Mag could not berate him for any of those things because Mag’s was the blood refusing to part from his hands.

When the guards had barreled into the room, Nureyev had stood tall, crowing his name like a rooster and grinning like an ancient trickster god summoned to torment those unfortunate souls who had incurred his wrath. He had not thought of the trickle of blood gradually sliding its way from his hairline down his nose, a residual of the splatter from the single slash it had taken to make him an orphan once more. 

He had worn the blood on his face and neck and hands like a soldier wearing battle scars, knowing it would make the boasting of a nameless sixteen year old all the more credible. However, it seemed his want for the credibility of a scar had been alike to a wish in a cautionary tale. The blood simply wouldn’t come out, tearing and staining the sim-paper towels as Nureyev dragged them from the dispenser and wet them and tore them across his nails and hands and face until his makeup looked like that of a two week old drowned corpse and the blood looked as if it had been tattooed into his skin.

Nureyev had gotten blood off of his hands before. It shouldn’t have been this difficult. However, whenever he blinked, his vision blurred and swam, and whenever he squeezed his eyes shut, the iron stench of blood pressed over his mouth and nose and made his head spin as if it had been chloroform. 

He hoped that someday, hindsight might be clearer than his current vision. However, despite the clarity he had in the moment in which he held his head high and tried to remember and perform every subtle emotional cue that would ensure he would not appear scared, he could hardly see past his own traitorous tear ducts. Peter could only pray that someday, he would feel full conviction.

With time and patience and a little bit of extra soap, the drying rust of Mag’s blood began to chip away from his skin. Nureyev forced himself to focus on the task at hand, rather than the series of hours that had walked him to this time and place and into this stranger’s clothes. He didn’t need to think about the partially nude man he had mugged and left in an alley nearby. He didn’t need to think about how soon, he would need to flee the planet he had called home, knowing he would mean nothing more to it than the face of the monster under the bed means to a small child.

Peter could only pray Brahma would not eventually come to outgrow him.

As much as he tried to corral his thoughts, he was tired and his patience with tactics that had been taught to him by someone he didn’t want to think about grew thin. He couldn’t quite keep his mind from wandering back towards the sticky red room and that sticky red light, in which he could hardly tell his own hand from the knife or Mag’s blood from the floor.

Mag had taught him too well. He had spent the last several years trying to end the lives of thousands to save an uncountable amount as well as teaching his son to be just like him. Nureyev supposed the life he traded for millions had merely been an extension of that lesson. Mag just hadn’t expected to become collateral in himself.

Nureyev tried to shove the thought aside, finding it gradually easier with the smell of soap and the stranger’s cologne replacing the choking stench of blood. He fixed his eyes on the little whirlpool at the bottom of the sink and watched the final russet streaks make their way into Brahma’s drainage system. Perhaps, Peter Nureyev would drain away with them, replaced by the name and identity of whichever ID he managed to bring with him when escaping New Kinshasa. 

There would always be parts of himself he couldn’t quite erase, but Nureyev could forgive himself from that. He doubted he would come across a person who would ever know him well enough to recognize him by the sound of his footsteps or the curve of his cheek or the way his brow creased when he was focused. He could change his style and makeup and cologne and most importantly, his name. With enough time and distance, perhaps, everything might be alright. 

There would be things he could not send down the drain. No matter how hard he scrubbed, Peter Nureyev would always be that cruel secret etched into his face and genetic code. No matter how hard he tried to forget it, his heart would always clench at the thought of Mag and there would always be a part of him that tried to preserve the feeling of loving and being loved by a parent in a little rose-colored bottle of formaldehyde.

Peter Nureyev was sixteen years old when he finished washing his father’s blood off of his hands. He was too old for his age and too young for his circumstances, and yet, unable to consider that for several years after the fact. He was a decade past learning to tie his shoes and two decades from a whisky-stained kiss in a detective’s apartment.

For now, at odds with whether to feel like a man or to glance up at the mirror and see the pale faced kid with his makeup worn away and his dark circles dragging under his eyes, Peter Nureyev took a deep breath, just to cherish that his lungs were still working.

He would run and live to see another day. He would live long enough to think all of this over in time. However, for now, he supposed it was best to file it away for future consideration.

**Author's Note:**

> fun fact id die for this kid
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or yknow what i dont have a threat just drink water and take care of yourselves and comment if you have the juice to do so because i would appreciate it very much
> 
> Check me out on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!


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